Two Charged in Alleged Plot to Kidnap, Kill

A high-ranking police official at a Massachusetts hospital and a former high-school librarian were charged on Monday in a plot to kidnap, torture and kill women and children, federal prosecutors said.

Richard Meltz, the 65-year-old chief of police for the Bedford Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Massachusetts, and Robert Christopher Asch, a former librarian at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, were held without bail after appearing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan and charged with conspiracy to kidnap, torture, rape and kill women and children—including the wife and children of a cooperating witness.

Peter Brill, an attorney for Mr. Meltz, said his client “had no interest or intention of hurting anybody…it was never anything other than a fantasy.” Lori Cohen, an attorney representing Mr. Asch, 61, declined to comment.

According to a criminal complaint, the men allegedly discussed the plot with the cooperating witness to help him kidnap, rape and kill his wife and some of her relatives, including children, over email.

An official said the case against the men grew out of an investigation in which a former New York Police Department officer was charged and convicted in a plot to kidnap, rape, cook and eat women. The former officer, Gilberto Valle, was convicted in March and is awaiting sentencing